Rails - The current system of 0 movement penalty while travelling on rails worked to some extent of modeling the rapid transit of troops. However, rail is a decidely 19th century concept.
I propose that rail movement be nerfed to a movement bonus. A 1 movement unit for example can move up to 4 tiles on rails. which is still substantially more than roads. The actual movement you can achieve here can be adjusted upwards for game balance, but the idea I want to get through here is that moving on rails should not be costless. So that if you're shifting troops from one end of your empire to another, the slower moving defensive units may take a few turns to arrive.
Flight should be a modern Age Technology that gives us Airports
Airports - Airlift will be scrapped. These will be the improvements to replace rails as the 'instant' movement . To do this however, players need to establish air routes between cities. These air routes can have multiple upgrades. Level 1 - 1 unit per turn Level 2 - 3 units Level 3 - 6 units and there are multiplying forces. 2 cities with level 3 airports would allow the movement of 6*2 = 12 units in any direction. However, if one city has a level 1 airport and the other a level 3, the movement can only be capped at 7 units and so on. These numbers may be adjusted for balance, and they are here only to illustrate a point. These air route capacitys will be calculated along each node, the weakest link in your chain will matter.
This of this as like a fishnet, or the internet. Each city is a node and the capacity of their airport is like the bandwidth. This adds some strategy, and if you're shifting troops through one chokepoint, that chokepoint is going to limit your ability to move an entire army in with one turn.
Air routes will also function much like caravans, each route will add a commerce bonus to both cities. And since pollution will be reworked and possibly removed, the workers in the late game will be relatively free. So here's an idea. Instead of being a city improvement built by the city, each city's airports and subsequent upgrades are built by workers. So basically, you pile in a bunch of workers into a city, and they build an airport. There will be some defined cost to building and it will take X amount of turns etc. And like all worker projects, the more you stack the faster the work gets done.
Also, players can create additional nodes in your air system by building airports outside of cities (much like the current Civ3 airports) and these airports can also be improved, however there will be no commerce bonus.
Also, as the number of nodes multiply, the number of possible air route permutations multiply. To prevent players from creating a mess, each city will be limited to say 3 air routes, which means that players may periodically have to optimize routes leaving key cities.
The basic idea though is not to complicate the game by forcing micromanagement of routes, but to encourage the creation of a daisy chain system and add strategy so that players may direct air routes from its cities to a outlying border town to prepare the capacity for an invasion.
Implications:
I've attached a hypoethetical 4 city, 1 airbase situation.
The cities are the red dots, the blue dot is an airforce base and the red numbers next to the lines indicate route capacity.
Let's say my central reserves is in London and war breaks out. The fastest way to get my units to the front is to move them to the Airforce base where they can move by rail into enemy territory. With my current configuration, I have no direct route from London to to the airbase so I have to move the units through other cities. Birminghan, Surrey and Coventry does have air routes to this airforce base and given their capacity vis-a-vis the airforce base. From London to these 3 cities, we can move 28 (12+7+9) units. I can however move from these 3 cities only 19 units (9+6+4) to the airforce base, so this at once limits my mobility and brings attention to the fact that I would have to reconfigure my route system to divert capacity into the airforcebase.
Comments welcome.
I propose that rail movement be nerfed to a movement bonus. A 1 movement unit for example can move up to 4 tiles on rails. which is still substantially more than roads. The actual movement you can achieve here can be adjusted upwards for game balance, but the idea I want to get through here is that moving on rails should not be costless. So that if you're shifting troops from one end of your empire to another, the slower moving defensive units may take a few turns to arrive.
Flight should be a modern Age Technology that gives us Airports
Airports - Airlift will be scrapped. These will be the improvements to replace rails as the 'instant' movement . To do this however, players need to establish air routes between cities. These air routes can have multiple upgrades. Level 1 - 1 unit per turn Level 2 - 3 units Level 3 - 6 units and there are multiplying forces. 2 cities with level 3 airports would allow the movement of 6*2 = 12 units in any direction. However, if one city has a level 1 airport and the other a level 3, the movement can only be capped at 7 units and so on. These numbers may be adjusted for balance, and they are here only to illustrate a point. These air route capacitys will be calculated along each node, the weakest link in your chain will matter.
This of this as like a fishnet, or the internet. Each city is a node and the capacity of their airport is like the bandwidth. This adds some strategy, and if you're shifting troops through one chokepoint, that chokepoint is going to limit your ability to move an entire army in with one turn.
Air routes will also function much like caravans, each route will add a commerce bonus to both cities. And since pollution will be reworked and possibly removed, the workers in the late game will be relatively free. So here's an idea. Instead of being a city improvement built by the city, each city's airports and subsequent upgrades are built by workers. So basically, you pile in a bunch of workers into a city, and they build an airport. There will be some defined cost to building and it will take X amount of turns etc. And like all worker projects, the more you stack the faster the work gets done.
Also, players can create additional nodes in your air system by building airports outside of cities (much like the current Civ3 airports) and these airports can also be improved, however there will be no commerce bonus.
Also, as the number of nodes multiply, the number of possible air route permutations multiply. To prevent players from creating a mess, each city will be limited to say 3 air routes, which means that players may periodically have to optimize routes leaving key cities.
The basic idea though is not to complicate the game by forcing micromanagement of routes, but to encourage the creation of a daisy chain system and add strategy so that players may direct air routes from its cities to a outlying border town to prepare the capacity for an invasion.
Implications:
I've attached a hypoethetical 4 city, 1 airbase situation.
The cities are the red dots, the blue dot is an airforce base and the red numbers next to the lines indicate route capacity.
Let's say my central reserves is in London and war breaks out. The fastest way to get my units to the front is to move them to the Airforce base where they can move by rail into enemy territory. With my current configuration, I have no direct route from London to to the airbase so I have to move the units through other cities. Birminghan, Surrey and Coventry does have air routes to this airforce base and given their capacity vis-a-vis the airforce base. From London to these 3 cities, we can move 28 (12+7+9) units. I can however move from these 3 cities only 19 units (9+6+4) to the airforce base, so this at once limits my mobility and brings attention to the fact that I would have to reconfigure my route system to divert capacity into the airforcebase.
Comments welcome.
